I too would like to see more dynamic worlds that have lots of depth and things to do. Worlds where your actions make a lasting change and impact. Though that would require perma-death or some sort of system that inherits off of it. If you kill an NPC and he comes back 5 minutes or even 5 days later, well that's not really quite a lasting change.

The same could go for PCs on a battlefield. I always found the most annoying thing about battlegrounds in WoW, was you could take forever taking a point because people would respawn right next to control points. The same for towns and cities, with the graveyards. As mentioned taking them had no value or purpose other than the challenge and saying you did it. After you did it, you would hold it for a little bit and then leave. Then everything started popping back up again.

I think it would be interesting if both NPCs and characters died permanently. This would mean taking towns and other places of interest would be more meaningful, because people wouldn't be just popping right back up 15 minutes later after you've left. You could capture other cities and make them yours to use, live in, and run after pushing out other people. Also of course this means the risk involved in doing this has gone up as well. Therefor it would take more commitment to doing it. Also it provides the interesting oppurtunity to raid a place, maybe not capture it but to steal some food from a warehouse or etc and run off into the horizon.

Though of course you don't want to loose everything you've worked so hard for because you died, losing months of work or the like. All your possesions, land, and etc. So with the perma-death system, you would want an inheritance system where you could pass along things to your "heir" as it were, your next character you roll. This could include a percentage of possesions, land deeds, some titles, and whatever you could think of that would apply. Also you could pass along a bit of "training" to your heir, therefor giving a boost to them skill point wise so all of your time was not wasted.

I don't like class based leveling systems, but I do like skill based leveling systems. Under the hood you're going to be leveling something up one way or another, so my personal opinion is just go with skills. It makes sense, it's been done before, is practical and also flexible enough for many interesting combinations. Though leveling shouldn't be the biggest focus of the game. Simple enough to where you can easily start a skill and get it a decent level of competence. A little bit harder to get to a larger level of performance, but still not a grind fest by any means. Then finally your grand master level of skills, would be for the more hardcore players, which would take lots of risk or time to advance to the highest levels in that tree. Though try to balance it so that it's not too hardcore where only a few will ever achieve it.

Finally I think that a persistant world should be grown and not created if that makes sense. The world should be randomly generated, but still be coherent. Also weather and other systems should be taken into account. So players will feel it if there is a drought, they won't have water for their crops. An economy that can be effected by that would be interesting, though maybe not quite fair, so of course more careful consideration would have to be taken into account for such a feature.

Finally NPCs and settlements should be grown as well. Have some sort of algorithm to grow the first NPCs. So that they have relations with one another, have professions and skills. In an area where there is few trees like in a desert, you'll have fewer woodworkers, and more waterseekers or what haver you. Finally the city should be constructed by developers to fit the needs of the enviroment, and that of the NPCs. Later on PCs can add onto this setlement through crafting.

You would have brick-makers, lumberjacks and woodwokers and etc in both PC and NPC populus. These would then be used to craft walls and etc for buildings. You could also add in other features from crafting, such as rugs, drapes, furniture. Or a big paddle wheel for making a building into a windmill for grinding grain etc. Economics would come into play here because you would depend on having enough brick makers or etc, but not too many or there won't be a signifigant profit. You'll find in some areas that wooden buildings are more expensive than another type like brick, and vice versa based on resources.

Another thought is that you want large projects that require lots and lots of the smaller crafted items like bricks to complete. The thing that comes into my mind would be a castle. The PC would have to design one, build one and acquire all the resources to do so. Including man power and the wealth. Some players would eventually reach a lord status, who get to own their own castle and land around it including a small town. They could pay other players to protect their lands as knights. Also pay other players to take part in a standing army, to raid other lords castles/lands and what have you.

My last thought is that you want to limit the populus growth rate in an area, both PC and NPC wise. A lord could have NPCs running the town as the labor, doing farming and etc that most players wouldn't want to be doing. The NPCs would eventually couple up, and have kids, which could then be born as other NPCs or a player could grow up from that kid and start playing the PC from there. That way not everyone is starting in the same towns, because only a certain amount of spots would be open at a time. The player who managed the NPCs could have a ratio/percentage of births that are allowed to become PC players.

Well anyhow, these are a lot of ideas I had loosely floating around my head. The goal in all of this isn't to be realistic. Though I see it that a gains/loss system happens to rely heavily on the perma-death rule, which so happens to be life-like. Also the economy relies on rarity. Which relies on introduction rates to the world. The best way to timely introduce product without flooding, is by forcing production and requiring higher skill levels in a craft for the more desired products/items.


Of course creating a world like this would be no small feat to say in the least, and would need lots more careful consideration and planning and fine tuning of issues. Such as player banking. You would want to bank your things, but how do you prevent a player from ruining the game by making a legit bank, then one day decide to up and leave with all of the gold and take it to another city in the dead of night. Though at the same time, that could make for an interesting dynamic story if you go and realise all the money is gone. Then find out that the player has fled by caravan with chests of gold, you have to chase him down and take it back. Then of course you get your big fight on splitting it up.

I think that the kind of game I'm describing can be end up being really frustrating, but by the same token, can have some of the most rewarding moments that you would ever experience in a game. You would take pride in what you did, the moments would be more memorable in my opinion. Instead of it just being another raid in the long list where you got one more uber item, you would have pulled off a great siege to bring down an enemy lord, steal his castle and find out a month later you're running with your tail between your legs from that same castle as another army lays siege to it.

The possibilities are endless, but at the moment so are the complications, design elements and the scale of the project. So I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on an 'ideal' anyway.


Edit: Minor edits for typos and some clairty revisions.

Quote:The problem I am having now is the lack in variety. I am tired of leveling and experience. I am tired of thousands of bland npc's with repetitive quests. I am tired of the classical fantasy tank/dps/healer/blah blah mold. I want something different.

Actually these are the symptoms, not the problem. The problem is that these games are based around the "Exterminator" or "Grave Robber" concept. There is only so much you can do with these concepts without getting repetitive (and I think we are starting to hit that now).

I think a paradigm sift is needed. Instead of doing the Exterminator/Grave Robber, why not try something different. RPGs are not all about booting down the door -> killing monsters -> looting the room (repeat ad nausem).

Take my favourite cRPG of all time: Sword of the Samurai, I am still playing it nearly 20 years later, think of the revenue that it could have had as an MMO (and imagine what you could do with modern processing and game dev techniques)!

Sure, you do go around and hack up baddies with your sword, but that is only one aspect of the game, the main aspect is maintaining your family's honour and forming alliances with other families. You can sneak into enemy strongholds like a ninja bent on mischief or to rescue a family member that was abducted, rescue your bride to be from bandits, lead armies into battle, challenge master swordsmen to mortal combat or perform a tea ceremony in an effort to bring peace between your house and another.

A game like Neverwinter Nights might have more pre-made dialogue and plot than Sword of the Samurai, but Sword of the Samurai has more of a Role to Play than "Goblin Exterminator".

I am not just advocating changing the theme of current games (if you paint a lemon orange, it is still just as sour...), but changing (and challenging) the whole way that we think a cRPG has to be.

Quote:I love the depth and social aspects of it as well as the feeling of being part of something bigger and on-going.

This is heard too many times for it not be something important. Sure, there will always be people who want to play cRPGs like the ones we have now, they are popular for a reason (they can be fun). But I believe we (as in all rpg game developers) can offer something different.

Too many people are complaining about there not being much originality in RPGs, sure there are differences, but it seems that there is not enough to satisfy what people want.

Quote:Original post by Wavinator
Has any MMO ever given you the ability to run fields/dungeons filled with monsters? I know that there are a few out there that let you be one monster. But what about 5 or 50? It would have to be sort of an RPG / RTS hybrid, obviously.

I'm not into MMOs for several reasons, but mostly I don't like being an also ran and how, due to the needs of new players, existing players can't really affect the world. I like the idea of unique powers that nobody else has, but that would have to be a much smaller game.

If the two ideas were combined, you might have a strange game where one side has to gather the right group to attack a "Dungeon Keeper" who gets his/her jollies from spreading evil through the land.

I think the biggest problem with the idea would be that nobody likes to lose. The "Dungeon Keepers" would probably whine about mobs of players ripping up their best creatures and intricately made dungeon, while the mobs would whine about being surrounded and outflanked. It'd probably be like the old game Myth, where people mounted classic military defenses from history (like Little Round Top) but still got called cheaters by the losing side.

Oh well.

Omg I was thinking about that MMORPG/RTS hybrid thing myself actually a while back. It started as a joke that soon game developers would stop writing complex AI for their games, and instead pay Chinese Sweatshops to play the NPC's for them.

Then I realised even though I was joking, it could easily be done with behind the scene tools that were more RTS like, to control multiple monsters, focus points, and quickly launch off abilities and etc. Not that it would have to be the chinese to run this obviously, but it was interesting how a tasteless joke actually lead to something creative/productive haha.